


Reach Out, Hold Back

by purplekitte



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: areyougame, M/M, Tripping Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 13:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/736426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Dorn/Curze: alternate timelines - “Oh, that hadn’t happened yet. Or wouldn’t happen here. He still remembered how it had felt.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reach Out, Hold Back

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: non-explicit sexual content, violence, sexual violence/rough sex, character death

He had meant to say something to Dorn before the fit began. What exactly it had been was lost in the flood of all the things he might say, all the places they might lead.

What actions now would lead to what futures then? Which were likely and which near impossible? Which did he _want_ to grasp and hold onto if he could? He didn’t know and could as soon hold the waters of a flood in his hand.

_Dorn’s almost confused look, as if he didn’t understand what he’d just done, as he pulled back his face--lips red and swollen--but left his hands where they had been holding Curze’s head still._

_Dorn’s body was still warm under the ceramite--and singed and blackened now from his lightning claws ripping it off of him--and he shredded into it, tearing at and violating the flesh he found beneath. If only he was still fighting--still trying to strike back, noble, stubborn, foolish brother--but the last drops of blood were long gone, let alone the light in his eyes._

Dorn’s hands pinning his wrists--no, that was actually happening.

_Dorn tore a fraying tapestry off the wall and dropped it over his brutalised body, head twisted around until it was nearly backwards, so Horus wouldn’t see it._

_Sprawled in his lap with those solid arms around him and his brother’s chin resting on the top of his head, Konrad hardly paid any attention to anything else. Thoth was telling that stupid story about the ambull again. Savitr opened his mouth to say--_

His blood tasted right, sharp and acrid, not weak and watery like anyone else’s--like his own when he gnawed on his arm--

 _Wanting to catch him as he stumbled from the pain glove, his screams still echoing in the air, but Curze didn’t know how to give comfort, only knew he didn’t want this. He also wanted to feel every spasm of those still twitching muscles against his own skin, unsure what the mixture of desire and disgust at his brother’s masochism meant._ Why would you want to be like me? Where’s your vaunted self-control now? _‘It wasn’t your fault--’_

_‘Help me,’ he said, and Dorn answered, ‘What?’ and it had been in Nostraman and he couldn’t possibly have forgotten that by accident._

‘Curze!’ Dorn headbutted him to get his attention, hands too occupied elsewhere for a slap. ‘Snap out of it!’

_‘Have you considered a complete restructuring of economic policy, law enforcement, education, and resource distribution?’ she asked (whoever she was) as if she wasn’t terrified almost out of her mind and the blood pooling in her lungs wasn’t bubbling to her lips._

_Rogal kissed with the thoroughness and measured force he did everything else. Konrad made little helpless whimpers whenever they broke apart, squirming against him--a creature of animal hunger, drawing blood with his nails. Rogal’s hands moved lower--_

Curze bucked up against him, wanting more. Wanting that touch on him, that sweaty body moving against his own. Dorn showed no sign of understanding, still searching for any sign of clarity to his sort of reality in him.

_‘It’s too late,’ he purred, savouring the hurt and betrayed look--like a kicked cur--in Dorn’s eyes across the battlefield. ‘Much too late.’ They’d hardly gotten started, the Night Haunter thought as electricity races across his lightning claws._

_Dorn thrashed under him as he licked his way down one of the lines of blood crisscrossing his entire body, biting the scab back open--as he took him apart, broke down that cold, stoic exterior and made him_ feel _, reduced him to a needy mess. He pressed in deeper--he’d make Dorn scream before bring him off again._

One voice was louder than the others and growing stronger as they faded away into echoes. Maybe that meant it was real... happening now.

_Burnt sugar on his tongue--too sweet--and he licked the back of his hand like a cat to get the taste of ashes and charred meat instead._

_‘You say you’re punishing yourself, but you get off on it, don’t you? Like a whore who wants to be degraded while she gets fucked. Do you ever--’_

‘Are you with me? Curze?’

‘Yes,’ he hissed through clenched teeth as the last few isolated visions flickered through him.

_Dorn held him through the last of his muscle spasms, loosening his grip from its ceramite-like solidity now that he was no longer in danger of hurting himself in his thrashing. He didn’t let go, though, and pressed kisses into Curze’s hair. Curze leaned into his warmth and his steady heartsbeat until his own racing blood had calmed._

Dorn sat back on his heels and made to stand. ‘Are you alright? Should I get Fulgrim?’

‘Happens,’ he managed, then he spit blood to get it out of his mouth. He’d bitten his tongue at some point.

‘Does this happen often?’

What was ‘often’? So vague. There were things that had happened and things that might yet happen. This was the only meaningful bifurcation of time.

...He couldn’t remember if Dorn had seen one of his fits before or if he only might have. The two blended into each other at the moment.

‘Sometimes.’

He was tired and wanted to curl up and lick his wounds like an animal in its den. Was Dorn safe or not? He was getting too many confusing signals of Dorn comforting him and killing him. He just wanted those glaring lights and the bright, shocking yellow the Imperial Fists insisted on to go away.

If he saw it, it was a possible future. Possible, but how to get there?

Dorn’s face showed as little of his emotions as he could manage, though a bruise was blooming on his forehead. Curze took a closer look at him and realised not all the blood in his mouth had been his own.

What would happen if he kissed Dorn right now, dragged him in to taste his own blood on Curze’s tongue? Which future would that lead to? If more pleasant futures existed, there must be something he could do, might do, to cause them. What? How? He was not made for such things. Maybe Fulgrim knew how you went about getting someone to want to kiss you. His experience from Nostramo suggested you paid them, but he didn’t know what Dorn would want.

Dorn was watching his eyes like he was doing calculations of angles. It occurred to Curze that keeping his gaze at throat level might have been misinterpreted as Dorn backed away slowly but steadily, as if believing that turning his back was suicidal and running too fast would make him pounce. (Sensible. Prey.)

No, he shouldn’t hunt him. The conflicting signals of _prey, mate, threat_ confused his instincts enough he could hold himself in check until he was alone.

Curze smashed every lumin panel in the room, gleeful at breaking things though he was drained. He covered the floor in glass and plasteel. He curled up under a table in the far corner, bulkhead at his back and stormoak over his head and his field of shards to crack and chime in warning of approach.

The darkness wrapped tenderly around him as he curled up upon himself. He chewed on his chapped lower lip, sometimes his knuckles or wrist, anything that got too close to his mouth, trying to rest but too wary of his weakness to sleep.

Caught up in remembering things that had never, would never happen, he pretended the arms around him weren’t his own.


End file.
